Unstoppered
by Darklady
Summary: "I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death"


"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death"  
Severus Snape  
  
Exactly what does he mean by that, I wonder?  
DL  
  
~AD~*~SS~*~AD~*~SS~*~AD~*~SS~  
  
Unstoppered by Darklady  
  
Disclaimer: JKR owns the characters. I don't. We all clear on that?  
  
Rated: PG. And barely strong enough to earn that. Unless you actually *read* it.  
  
Archive: FF.Net - of course. Others? Please ask.  
  
Note: I would like to thank the people at the Severus Snape F-Q-Fest, who asked the question that inspired this. I would have sent it to them, but sadly this isn't slash. Or het. Or much of anything relationship-wise. I do hope that it is... interesting.  
  
~AD~*~SS~*~AD~*~SS~*~AD~*~SS~  
  
Severus Snape, Potion Master and spy, made his careful way along the shattered roof of the last standing tower of Hogwart's battlements.  
  
Below - chaos. Or seeming chaos, for no clash between two so subtle wizards as Thomas Malvolio Riddle and Albus Dumbledore could ever lack pattern, however mad this clash of DeathEaters and Phoenix might appear to a watching eye.  
  
Brilliant patterns, woven in equal threads of dark and light. Snape had filled both men's shuttles from the first, a strongest thread for each, and yet he too had slid blindly past that last twisted knot. That last comb-tap when the loom of history was complete.  
  
Voldemort had attacked Hogwart's in force that morning, and suddenly it was too late for what remained of the Ministry of Magic to do anything but rally to the Castle's defense.  
  
Snape ducked a ice-blue flame, spell unknown and caster likewise. Even perhaps to themselves, as sanity vanished with sight under the haze of battle.  
  
The final battle. Final in that the Magic Authorities were finally forced to acknowledge what Dumbledore had been telling them all along, that Voldemort was not merely back but back with a vengeance. Final in the meaning that said vengeance would not be long in coming, should the Dark Lord's forces overcome the Castle's interior wards. And final in that *everyone* was finally forced to not only acknowledge the two sides but to pick one. The time for fence-sitting was a vanished past.  
  
All of Snape's life was below. Everyone he knew - who he loved - or hated - was in the tangle underneath his feet. The great Masters, of course. Dumbledore and Voldemort,standing their opposite ends, each surrounded by their court of powers. But also others. Battle was always the game of others. Malfoy and Malfoy - surprising in their choices. Trelany - shocking in hers. Longbottom and Sprout, surprising in their strength. Flitwick, tragic in his weakness. Weasly and Weasly and Weasly, and of course Weasly - predictable as always.  
  
Sunset was coming, in its eternal certainty, but? Snape shielded his eyes from a sudden explosive flash of lethal green. Tonight the pink sky would be lost in an earthly constellation of green and gold. Just as the coming darkness would flee from the ruby blaze of hex and counter-charm.  
  
Potter and his friends were being expectedly brave.  
  
McNair and his dark troops were being expectedly vicious.  
  
Only the victory was proving other then anticipated - by either side.  
  
Thus this final act.   
  
Each year Snape told his students that one could stopper death. They never listened. Rather? He smiled thinly as he eased one thin amethyst bottle from his wand-pocket. They listened, but they never *heard*.  
  
One could indeed bottle death. Bottle it easily, in the near-Muggle way of poisons and compounding, but also bottle it up in the far finer ways of Celestial Alchemy. Catch it in the mortal at the moment of it's coming, and seal it away where it could never again reach the unfailing host.  
  
That was the High Art.   
  
Nicholas Flamel had done that once - or so he said. He had brought forth his stone and suckled at its power for centuries and called that the Conquest of Death.  
  
Amateur. Snape's lips curved, half smile and half sneer. In the end death had come for Flamel - and in it's own good time. Flamel's art was a ransom to death - not a mastery.  
  
To master death one must hold it close indeed. Command it in its coming and its going, its striking and its staying. Chose to the moment when it shall take or let be.  
  
Where Flamel had built a fence, Snape had molded a gaol.  
  
Twice.  
  
Once for Dumbledore. Struck by an ambitious DeathEater late in the first War and not yet willing to conceded the victory - or his command - he had welcomed Snape's offer of the supposedly impossible cure. How gratified had the great man been at his so brilliant student's gift to the light. How proud of his own faith repaid.  
  
Once before that, when his other Master had also faced his mortality and found it more pucient then whatever morality the then-still-human Riddle might had tucked in his shredded soul. Or - more to the point - found his terror of the next world more immediate then the reasonable fear of what a dark spirit like Snape might do once he *had* ones quite literal life in his hands.  
  
How quickly memory fades. Or rather? Snape anchored himself between two shattered crennels, ducking low to avoid the backlash of blocked spells. How quickly hope triumphs over caution even in the most hopeless of hearts. How content even the wisest and most careful are to believe themselves exulted. To accept the oaths and vows of loyalty, even in the evidence of the frailness of human faith. To embrace and welcome and leave the reclaimed lamb with it's wolf-toothed memories tucked back in forgotten darkness - until the moment the serpent in one's breast is proved to be a serpent all along.  
  
Snape slid out the ruby bottle. Two lives in two hands. Tucked safely away for years in the lowest and most secret oubliets of the Castle's forgotten halls. Where was safety now?  
  
Holding the second thin vessel to the fading light, Snape tracked with knowing eyes the frantic swirls of not-quite-being inside.  
  
Was it life he held? Or death?  
  
Some for one, and the rest for the others.  
  
Life and Death. These were mutable words. Never existent apart. One sparking the other into being. Like victory and defeat.  
  
Light and dark.  
  
Black troops and white.  
  
One gentle pull and a king would fall. The king, and all his forces with him, because only kings counted in war and Wizards Chess.  
  
Not brave knights and noble queens, and most definitely not pawns of twice-disregarded spies. Except for the Fool's Mate - when the Master misplayed a move and one overlooked pawn was positioned to take the King.  
  
Severus Snape looked over the blasted field, counted the thinning numbers of the Order's ranks, and... unstoppered a bottle.  
  
Shaq Morte.  
  
~AD~*~SS~*~AD~*~SS~*~AD~*~SS~  
  
KKR 2002  
  
Which bottle do you think he opened? 


End file.
